I've been experimenting with using Obsidian hosting web apps such as Legend, Notion, Walling and Google Calendar etc. One method is to create an Obsidian Canvas and then paste the web address in it. Then you log in with your credentials.

Using a canvas lets you add other blocks and content along with the hosted app, allowing for some interesting brainstorming. Currently I'm playing with both. There's also a Canvas Mindmap plugin that works with canvases. So far, it seems quite useful.

The other method is to use an Obsidian Plugin called Open Gate, where you enter the website address and set a few options. With Legend, you need to log in with your email address and password. Logging in with Google precipitates errors. With Open Gate, I've set up Legend to appear on the left side of the app and others open at the right. Then the center will have a note or document.

The web apps can also be hosted nicely inside DevonThink, which has a good internal browser.

-Mike

I have Devonthink's server edition and tried to paste the DT web address in an Obsidian canvas.

My guess is Obsidian didn't like my self-signed cert. When I have more time I'll try setting DT up for http. On first try, I got the login screen but didn't get into the DT server.

Note that 80 and 443 are blocked in my firewall. I am exposing http on my local network only, not to the Internet at large.

I've experimented with web sites displayed on Obsidian canvas. I get the same issue that I get in DEVONthink at times: the logins are not persistent between "sessions". If I quit and restart Obsidian, or reboot the machine, or sometimes merely wake the machine from sleep, the logins are gone when I go back to that canvas. I assume it's an issue with caching credentials, obviously, but haven't bothered to resolve it.

Actually, life is simpler just putting Obsidian and a browser is side-by-side windows on the desktop.

Obsidan canvases are nice, but as a portal they suck, in my humble opinion.

I agree that using a canvas as a portal isn't very good. It was more of a proof of concept. What works better is a plugin called Open Gare. This opens a site as a panel on the side of your choice. For general web work, I agree that placing a browser next to Obsidian is the way to go.

While this isn't directly relevant to the above conversation, it is relevant to using Obsidian with web pages.

I've been experimenting with an Obsidian plugin, Nathan George's Webpage HTML Export, and have been profoundly impressed. It generates a very nice reproduction of one's Obsidian note (or even several notes in a folder, if you so wish, although I've noticed it's not very good with lots of notes in a folder) as a web page, but also adds a table of contents and a dark/light switching button. The various headings in the page all fold, just as they do in Obsidian, and the table of contents reflects all headings and subheads (and can also fold). Any tasks in the page can be checked/ticked, just as they can in Obsidian.

It's perfect for creating and instantly publishing micro-blogs or extended articles!

Even more amusing is using the Read Later plugin to download an interesting webpage, then re-exporting it as an HTML file. Read Later integrates with Pocket and InstaPaper. Which reminds me that I also use the sensational Mac/iOS app History Book to track all web pages I'm reading and save them to ultra-efficient markdown. The markdown pages can later be imported into Obsidian (or the markdown editor of your choice). History Book's use of space is extraordinarily efficient, which is why I have no hesitation leaving it permanently on in background mode (also on my iPad; it syncs with my Macs).

The range of seriously great, web-interactive markdown apps just keeps getting better and better! I'm just reexamining LogSeq, which appears to have evolved significantly since I last took a look.

Cheers!
Bill

Disclaimer - I haven't used this, but it looks cool.

On my list of things to try is Pelican, a Python static website generator.

Input is Markdown, so it should be able to feed off of a subdirectory in an Obsidian vault.

It's my understanding that parts, perhaps all, of mellel.com are created and maintained with Pelican.

Obsidian as front end for a website sounds pretty cool.

Or, Devonthink with an indexed location for Pelican.

MadaboutDana wrote:

The range of seriously great, web-interactive markdown apps just keeps
getting better and better! I'm just reexamining LogSeq, which appears to
have evolved significantly since I last took a look.

You are quite right Bill. I find myself re-evaluating LogSeq as well. I abandoned it about a year ago, but I've come back to it in the last few days. Admittedly, it's not an easy application, but I'm finding it more and more meaningful, especially the use of daily notes as a basis for background work and research. Logseq is evolving in a very interesting way and can be a good complement to other more formal applications. Also: all of us CRIMPERS have an undisguised weakness for outliners, to which we return again and again ;)

Heh heh, you're not wrong – long live the outliner!!!

tberni wrote:

You are quite right Bill. I find myself re-evaluating LogSeq as well. I
abandoned it about a year ago, but I've come back to it in the last few
days. Admittedly, it's not an easy application, but I'm finding it more
and more meaningful, especially the use of daily notes as a basis for
background work and research. Logseq is evolving in a very interesting
way and can be a good complement to other more formal applications.
Also: all of us CRIMPERS have an undisguised weakness for outliners, to
which we return again and again ;)

I seem to remember, many many years ago, reading ADM developer's vision of the World Wide Outline or something to that effect.

Maybe deep inside we would like the world to be describable as (reducible to) a hierarchical outline.

But probably, as per David Weinberger, everything is miscellaneous.

We can at least try to maintain such simple structures (or the illusion thereof) in our own work, or at least in our current project, or at least in the task at hand, or at least in the document at hand, somewhere anyway...

Huzzah for outliners!

I've been using Reflect lately. As I mentioned in the friction thread, I find it more frictionless than most apps, although I honestly can't put my finger on why. Partly it is due to the fact that it isn't weighed down with a lot of features I don't need, but that isn't the only reason. It's basis is daily notes, in which I can build outlines. It is far from a comprehensive outliner -- no features (yet) like zooming into a topic. But it does allow folding of subtopics to tuck them out of the way. Still a work in progress, though.

Steve